Noam Chomsky: Public Education and The Common Good (2013)

In a country where the common attitude seems to be “every man for himself,” students need to band together to fight for their education among other public programs, said Noam Chomsky addressing more than 800 students at East Stroudsburg University on February 6, 2013.

Society, or the common good, as Chomsky called it, encourages people to focus on themselves and their own success. Programs such as public education and Social Security, which are now under attack, are based on a different perception.

“They are based on the perception that we should care about other people….That’s a dangerous perception. It means you should be a human being and not a pathological creature.”

Mr. Chomsky also gives an a long historical perspective to the educational system and how it has been used not for the common good but rather for the special interests of those who have power and money.

As part of the broader discussion on Public Education and The Common Good DR. Chomsky spoke at great length about Climate Change and Global Warming, Environmental Policy, Global and Domestic approaches towards how we approach these issues. Dr. Chomsky also answers a question asked of him on Hydraulic Fracking process as it relates to environmental issues.

As with the broader concept Dr. Chomsky talks about how information and or education of certain people are controlled for the benefit of cooperate profits as compared to the common good, which at this point can be the survival of the human race.

The fact is, Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism thrives on ambiguity, the meticulously intentional orchestration of social chaos. Climate-science disinformation is yet another egregious example of how conflicted our potentially coherent natural intelligence is these days. There is no dialogue in the US it is all one big argument.

I should like to hear Professor Chomsky’s considered opinion about the crucial underlying issue, namely the corporatization of science and scientific research. The data sets are now so inseparable from the systems that operate them, it has become increasingly difficult for independent scientists to operate outside the institutional frames of corporate endowment and control.

Peer review is no longer a bulletproof assurance of integrity or inclusion. Publication itself is tied to sponsorship. Witness the Monsanto-Dow-Dupont etc etc criminal abominations; the corruption of the universities and the buying and selling of public intellectuals. Open science, by definition, is uncertain; but it is has been promoted as a prestigious, tenured dogmatic soap-box. Free speech is anything but free; everything has a price tag in America. The rural French used to call this the American (money) disease.

Noam Chomsky is always worth listening to. We should treasure him; for who will fill his shoes when he is no longer able to sustain the heroic continuity of his principled stand?

I’ve been convinced that we were unleashing ever more massive anthropogenic insult upon our precious environment for decades, not just from green-house gas smogs, but mining, deforestation, intensive agribusiness, relentless environmental stress on all species (including ourselves, especially indigenous peoples) over-fishing and worst of all, petro-chemical pollution in all its myriad carcinogenic forms.

Even in the late eighties when I was still in Canada, most people seemed oblivious or indifferent to the harm we were doing, and I felt like a complete pariah, someone who was simply an alarmist and an odd-ball.
Attitudes have changed, but the problem is now. predictably enough, dramatically worse. In fact it is so bad, people are in psychological denial, unwilling to face the responsibility.

My point is that our corporate “masters” and their puppeteers, the thieving industrial tycoons, are parasitical opportunists who play both sides, manipulating the opposition, through green-wash, consumer blackmail and double-blind patronage, totally paralysing the political process.

Noam concedes there is difference and dissent within the scientific community, but this is exploited for all it’s worth too. So I really agree with you, it doesn’t take a genius to get it. The problem is the corrupt and venal play the trump panic card, so that natural instinct that should be more than enough to ring the bells gets transmuted into social paranoia and impotence. These dollar clowns know exactly what they’re doing; at least they think they do. You and I know they’re genocidal imbeciles, but they are all self-congratulatory narcissistic biophobes and gynophobes, masturbating themselves into oblivion. It is all too cynical and pathological for words.

Operation: #OneMoreVote

The FCC voted to repeal net neutrality, letting internet providers like Verizon and Comcast impose new fees, throttle bandwidth, and censor online content. But we can stop them by using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). We need one more vote to win in the Senate, and we’re launching an Internet-wide push to get it.

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